HOUSE TOUR: Inside Libby Cameron's Colorful Connecticut Home

on today's episode of homeworthy we're bringing you to Connecticut for an inside look into interior decorator Libby Cameron's layered and colorful home an avid animal lover Libby has incorporated vibrant Wildlife motifs around every corner from printed fabrics and Brass figurines to artwork and dogs not to mention her litter of adorable Labrador puppies enjoy you're watching homeworthy where we believe every home has a story like And subscribe for more hello I'm worthy I'm Libby welcome to my Connecticut house come on in and look around I'll give you a tour [Music] I'm Libby Cameron I have been living in this house for about six years believe it or not I've only really lived in three houses in my entire life which is kind of a frightening thought but at any rate um I have been in the design business since 1983 I believe so 40 years and I do mostly residential projects all over the country some in the Bahamas some abroad I think that this house is a reflection of me because I think I love color I love Whimsy I love the unexpected and the sort of quirky things that happened in life so you'll see that um most of what's in this house has been collected or repurposed somehow and most of the pieces have come from friends and people I used to work with I've actually bought very little it's all just sort of comes with me wherever I go there are 13 dogs right here now in the house six are permanent and there are seven puppies they may keep a little girl um but I had a dog or got a dog about 20 years ago I just adored he was my best friend and I don't know just one animal that really stayed with me in life and he was beautiful to boot from a very good line of labradors his his grandmother was the grand champion of Westminster um in the labrador division but um so I got his name was George so I got George a wife named fig and have had litters now of the six dogs I have they're all descendants I have great granny Dan to great grandchildren um and I just love it I love the experience of whelping of litter of puppies and and you know seeing how tiny they are and how she responds whichever mother it is and you know in this world where everything is so crazy and there's so much negativity and so much sparring with politics there's something so pure and wonderful about a litter of puppies and the mother's response and just life at its best life is simplest and purest this is the foyer um which hasn't changed in shape but when I first bought the house this was a sladish Stone kind of floor and there was an italianate sort of banister and railing and it's a very difficult space to put a rug in because of the shape and it's you know you don't want to put a rug this way you can put one that way but then that has that area has nothing to go on so I put in a wood floor and it was white for years and then during covid my friend Matthew Terrell came over and painted it um sort of a fantasy marble whatever it is but you know all of the things that I have in this house are have sentimental value to me I mean the this cow was given to me by John roselli I just love him I love his eyes and and sort of the softness of his muzzle I think he's so sweet this piece Albert Hadley gave to me it was I just remember working on it forever to get this this tortoise shelf finish that he did and you know his discussion about sizing it so that it wasn't so big that it wasn't you know it was realistically looking like a piece of tortoise shells because tortoise shells aren't that big um and this little hats the umbrella stand was from John roselli and it has sort of my odd collection of walking sticks for the most part I lose every umbrella I ever get um the wallpaper was one that I worked with Albert designing in the 80s for a client and it's named after her Sue Ellen made by Xena Studios and you know they're just little things I collect along the way I think that little mirror Mrs Parish gave me of this sunflower which I've always loved um I don't know what it was originally it was probably on the I don't know maybe it was on a carving of in a wall carving or something in a church I don't know where it came from but um you know and I see something I go for it so um this is a hat rack I found in Maine at a funny little antique shop that doesn't exist anymore sadly but I love the the wheel back shape of it um with all of its you know sort of I mean it's nothing special but it just I again I don't think things have to be Priceless to have character when I first moved into this house there was there were a pair of doors this hallway or this foyer had many many doors there was a pair of doors here a pair of doors into the living room and this was a pair of doors with absolutely no light so I took out those doors and had uh Dutch door a Dutch door made and put in the side lights just to get the light in the house oh sorry Dogs part of the house well I've always have been an animal lover and I was convinced as a child that I would be a veterinarian and I worked at veterinary hospitals in Washington DC where I grew up and then I worked as a zookeeper at the National Zoo in Washington and then I actually got an internship for six months at Gerald Darrell's Zoo off the coast of France on the island of Jersey and had a sort of pretty scary experience there where I got um caught in a gorilla pen with baby gorillas and essentially lost my nerve to stay with animals also being a zookeeper I didn't think sort of had all the bases for me so I came back and I moved to New York and I worked for a caterer for a little while and then I worked for the Central Park Conservancy and as a child I couldn't even ask for my allowance so asking trying to fundraise was not my strong point so then I was sort of at a Crossroads I had just gotten married and I was very close to an uncle Rory Cameron who lived for the most part in the south of France and I was very very close to and he happened to be coming to New York so I asked him sort of to help and help me figure out what I should do in life and he immediately said oh you should get into interior design you would love it so I he encouraged me to reach out to Sister Parish who is someone um whose name I knew was a child and she had worked for my grandmother's sister as well as my grandparents and so I invited myself for tea um and she very firmly said we never hire the children of clients and Albert Hadley joined us and said oh go to back to school get learn something about design because all I could really knew about is animals and you know I had absolutely no experience with design I didn't know what a braid versus a picture Hook was but I I took his advice and I went to Parsons and I Rory said keep calling keep calling see if anything opens up and luckily I got a phone call one day that they needed some help for me to essentially be a gopher and sit in an apartment um during an installation and you know accept deliveries and supervise you know people coming and going and make sure they showed up and that sort of thing and it turned into a full-time job so that was in 19 early 1983. so this is the living room um and again these are all things that have just sort of been a part of my life forever with the ex you know I don't think there's anything that I might have bought that coffee table but I think everything else is either a family piece or a street find so when I moved into this house um I did recover everything and this was a fabric that I've always loved that has been discontinued [Music] um so it was sort of the starting point for the room on top of this panel um which is actually a copy of the one of three that Mrs Parrish had in her dining room in her New York City Apartment I just loved it it was John roselli did it um I just love the colors I love everything the sort of The Whimsy of it these lamps from Christopher Spitz Miller came from a client um I've always loved these pillows made by Robin Goss because she makes things out of string and ribbons and they just makes for such a nice texture um but all of the upholstery none of it's new it just gets repurposed the Shays was from my ex-husband's family um it was in a bedroom upstairs nobody wanted it but it's the best place to read um that this funny little table was Albert Hadley gave me which I love um I'm not sure the story of it but there's I remember him saying something about it coming from The Duchess of Windsor had a similar table if not that was hers I doubt it was hers but at any rate these man was from my um ex-husband's family's place in Long Island he was on the porch and I think he's been repainted many times by different gardeners but um and he must have had something in his hand years ago but he's just sort of a wonderful character I don't know if he's a Swami but he must have been one of the guards for an Indian Palace this funny little piece this it's not really an apothecary chest I don't I don't even think it's dakupa yeah that is decoupage but it's just a funny thing that I found antiquing one day with Albert Hadley the chairs he gave me these dogs my father gave these to me as a wedding present and they're Stirrup cups um a set of six I just I've always loved them then they're um this this one was for spices to put on top of the mulled wine or whatever you would wear drink at a an English hunt um these paintings are by my Stepmother's father but his name was Eugene leak I love these Anthony fry paintings Albert gave me this little basket of strawberries which I love um it's just sort of an mixture of things this table belonged to my ex-husband's grandmother um I've had the leather restored a couple of times but it doesn't it doesn't it gets bleached by the sun in this room but it's just sort of this wonderful strange mercury glass boot table um this screen was from my great aunt's house in Arizona and it was a wreck when I got it after she died so I had it restored but I I love it I love the birds and I love the colors in it and this funny little chair Mrs Parish gave to me years ago I guess it was a sample originally as was that one for chair makers to have in their shops so that it didn't they didn't take up too much space um that bench was a parish Hadley design as was this little table and then these you know these other things I don't know where they came from I mean that I know I found with Albert shopping at one point Mrs Parish gave me that pillow I think Albert gave me this pillow for my birthday one year as the cat knowing that I loved animals so everything's the rug was from Corey rugs which doesn't exist anymore in New York City um they gave it to me as a thank you for another rugs that I have found for somebody my marriage ended in 1995 and I decided that I needed to change my life so I have many many dogs too many dogs and wanted more space when we lived in Larchmont we lived on an eighth of an acre and at that point I think we had four dogs and I I just wanted more space I wanted lower taxes I so I started looking and I looked at many many houses I probably looked at 35 houses and this house was a dump I mean the pond was a swamp the you know the siding was coming off the driveway was all crumbling and but I just thought there's something about having a pond that I thought was just wonderful and I still feel that even though the dogs come in covered in mud many days but I um I don't know I just really liked the piece of property so slowly you know over the past six years I've been fixing it up and cutting down trees and you know doing bits and pieces here and there I mean cosmetically I redid the inside but it's always I mean you know I don't think I'm ever satisfied with the way something looks it's always an excuse to redo something but um it's been fun it's a good project well I think they're you know you sort of have to pay attention to the colors but I don't think there's anything wrong with having a blue chair that says a you know pattern on it with the yellow I mean I the more the merrier in my opinion you know as long as they all sort of speak to each other you know this is the only entrance to the back of the house and there's a little terrorists out there um and for a long time I've I really struggled with this room about how to to place the furniture I thought about having a sofa there at one point I had a sofa here but the room got cut in half and I figured for the amount of times I would use that door it doesn't make any sense to you know not use this end of the room so it made sense to to put the sofa there and have another seating groups I mean that was one of the Cardinal rules that Parish Hadley is always to get as many seating groups in a room as possible these bookshelves gosh I actually painted and gilded these myself in 1983. they were much taller and when I lived on a in a loft on Broome Street there was a finial above them to give you an idea of how high the ceilings were and sadly when I moved into this house I had to cut the base down two inches but I just I love them Rory Cameron had similar ones they were more diminutive but they were the same kind of pyramid bookcases and I just love the shape of them this sculpture is by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and everyone sort of jokes that he's the texture because it looks like he's texting a phone but I mean my guess is that she made this in the 30s or 40s but um he's one of her many sculptures that were in my husband's family I just love him and this was a mirror from the parish Hadley collection so you can see everything's just a big mix I mean this is a nothing table that came from my aunt that table there with all the little boxes on it was all those boxes were her I loved her um so I I kept some of the things that I think meant the most to her especially she she was had race horses and I've always loved this little silver jockeys cap yeah so these are for my grandson and granddaughter who's on her way and I love this little Lions basket with this Mane I think he's very sweet and I find this little voice in my head sometimes saying oh don't do that because it won't work because um but for the most part you know it's just guttural I mean I think you either understand it or you don't what do you love the most about this house I love the amount of color in it because color always makes me happy I remember when I first moved to New York walking by dry cleaners and seeing all of the spools of thread on inside the windows of where the people were repairing clothing for people and just always being mesmerized by all the different colors that were on the boards holding all the little spools of thread so this is my dining room um it's a pretty bright color but I love this color I think it's warm and it's a happy color and I guess that's always matters to me these chairs I've had Albert Hadley actually brought the original back from one of his many trips to Tennessee and I had them copied and they're mahogany but I painted them white because I just thought they were too boring in a mahogany finish um and put the leather on so this leather's got to be got 35 years old um but it's held up not a classic dining room and that it's so filled with color I I've fell in love with this rug at a at Elizabeth eakins and I was lucky enough to be at John roselli store in New York when it was on 73rd Street where I found this elephant who I had to have luckily I have always had a wall big enough to put it on this bench was a street find I was going to meet a client with Albert Hadley one morning and we saw it on the side of the street and luckily Parish Hadley had a we had a car and driver and it was a big station wagon so Albert and I put it in the back of the station wagon and it needs to be reupholstered but it will someday these are copies that John roselli makes of sconces that Mrs Parish had in her entrance hall in New York and I love them I just think they're such a unexpected shape first for a wall sconce this decoupage is by Apple Bartlett who is Mrs parish's daughter and she makes these incredible decoupage Creations I have quite a few of them around the house but I love them they're um you know she usually finds pieces of wood that she puts together and this is just a piece of plywood but you know she works them all in and adds all the different pieces um I happen to love this goat I saw him at it at the gift show one year and just thought he was so sweet these these curtains believe it or not are from 1983 for a show House I worked on in Southampton with Albert this was a wallpaper panel that was getting thrown away at Paris Hadley so I took it um this all this blue and white Canton China was from my aunt when she died she had a collection so I've sort of placed it around and I think it's so pretty with this blue mirror chest which belonged to my ex-husband's family along with the sconces my mother-in-law gave to me years ago which I love I just fell in love with him I saw him on Instagram he's from some place in Florida in Palm Beach West Palm Beach I can't remember the name of the shop now but I just thought he was so sweet that there was something about his feet that I loved they're so sort of round and funny looking um so this Ram during covet Mario Waters pieces were at auction and I just loved this Ram I thought he was so sweet and I thought I was being so smart and saving so much money by driving up to Hudson and putting him in my car but he didn't fit so I drove home with him on the top of my car and I think I bent the frame a little bit so he's sagging in one corner but I guess that's okay these Labs I found without actually with Gary Hager who was one of my favorites who worked at Parish Hadley who died years ago I adored him I found this crazy otter at uh Apple Bartlett shop and uh on Dark Harbor on islesboro and she did this this is another one of her decoupage pieces um that came from a show she did a triage Bunny and John Roselli's um shop in New York that closed a few years ago but I just thought it was so wonderful if you somewhere in here there's a little metal bird I don't see it now but I'm not wearing my glasses um but there's you know there's a little cat hiding there and a chicken and a goat it's just oh here's the bird but I think she's just she's just you know she's painted the trees but this is part of a wallpaper and everything's it's got three-dimensional qualities too which I just love I just love her work [Music] so this is my library um there's one wall of books but it's uh my many years of collecting animal prints most of them are crooked at the moment but um it actually started here with this Jersey cow I was I went to a boarding school in Massachusetts and one night we were out late Beyond when we should have been out and I saw this on a barn and it was propped up against the side and was in terrible disrepair so I took it I wish I shouldn't have done but I did and it's always been one of my favorite things it was in my room at school college it's been with me since 1974. I just love it but that sort of started this whole collecting there was a young there were a couple up in uh Manchester Vermont who had a lot of these prints and they probably are just from books but you know they're just everything's been added to it since you know this needlework this is one of Apple Bartlett's little um decoupage that's from a dealer in London people have given me these things over the Year this is a little drawing by a cousin of mine so I just collect them um things that I love anything to do with animals this is a sculpture which I've been meaning to have a base made for by Bruno Ramada that I loved I bought in the 1980s I just love this work I've always wanted to get it higher so you look through it going down the stairs this cat Albert gave me um it was next to his bed I just I've always loved it and I just you know I collect things anything little brass animals that lamp has the tiger on it it was something I gave to my ex-husband you can see everything now I run out of running out of wall space so I Hank starting to hang things on on the bookcases I mean there's this wonderful woman named Sarah battle in England who makes these little decoupage pieces so I think there's one two three I think there are four of them that I have I just love her work and you know I've had that creature forever and then I found the owl lanterns then I found the second one at a yard sale and this is another one of those cats like I have in the living room but you know everything sort of finds a home I just shove it in the shelf and I have a thing for owls so I've got two there and one there and those two they are one up there anyway but I just anything to do with animals I always love um I love this seal he was belonged to a client and she gave him to me a few years ago when she sold her house made by John I'm blanking on his name but I just think he's so sweet um but you know I just mix everything up I mean inexpensive little wicker elephant the table that you know was Gary hagers at Parish Hadley that I love and my giraffe I know isn't he wonderful he's been with me a long time too I think I got him when my youngest was a little girl and he was in their room and you know no one thought it was fun to take him off to college or to their first apartment but I was happy to have him with me I've always loved this you know usually you see these Garden stools and they're made of to look like elephants but this one's a rhinoceros so I've always loved him this is a rug made Albert Hadley always had a lot of the needle hooked zebra rugs this is one of them from his collection so as you can see I mean there's a cow hooked rug and here's a whale and it's just endless you know endless animals in this house these are my I don't remember what year it was but Parish Hadley did a table setting for American Ballet Theater and we were all had one afternoon where we painted these mice um there were I don't know how many of them but they were on the tables and they held somehow and I don't remember how they held up a book a bowl of nuts on every table that was the centerpiece and so we had little skirts made for them and I don't know I just you know that they just have sentimental value to me you know funny butter dish my daughter gave me and you know this is a chicken that was one of the first things I Mrs parish's daughter Apple made it for um a show House I did in Far Hills New Jersey with Malcolm for something to do with Malcolm Forbes I don't even remember now but many many years ago you know you know things I'm a pack rat that cockatiel Weather Vein was from Mario Bros collection again it was at Sotheby's and they were such interest in his sale that I think they called me at 11 30 to say it was up and I got it for nothing because everyone had gone to sleep but I just thought it was kind of wonderful those valence is actually had made for the Kips Bay show House room I did and they're the metal they're tin and they were made by an auto body shop and then paying it by Chuck Fisher who's a wonderful decorative artist um to match the wallpaper which is in my front hall but it was that Sue Ellen wallpaper with the Stars was the wallpaper used on the walls there and this is I love this these Flowers by Olivia Chetty who does owns that company the green vase that makes all the wonderful paper flowers I've actually taken a couple of courses of hers I love her things my pack uh come on nugget so Marge has been chewing on her foot so she's wearing her her cone of shame poor dog but these are this is figgy come here figgy this is the matriarch these are all her Offspring um this is Liesel and Marta who were named for the um they were named for the Von Trapp children from The Sound of Music and I never changed their names nugget was from a litter last year where the puppies were all named after elves Santa's elves Bree was Bree and her brother was cheddar who Todd Romano has Henry was a solo puppy and he's a little bit crazy but he's very sweet um but he's the Brother full brother of Martin Liesel I know it's very exciting and then we have the newest group we have and they're named after herbs and spices come on baby leave your puppies alone so you can see they're four weeks old they're very little um and this is day two in the kitchen they've just moved from my bedroom but you have chicory Chive uh who's this this is parsley pepper Curry oh and paprika there's this little one over there but they're very you know they're they're just really coming into their own they're walking and making lots of sweet noises and leave me in about a month sadly this is actually their half brother and that's their mother my children always complain that the dogs are always underfoot which they are they're too many of them but I love them dearly and so this room was a little office that you entered off the living room when I first bought this house and I really wanted a room for just the dogs so this is the doggy room it's filled with their beds and none of the crates have doors on them but they sleep in them anyway and they're they're ribbons from dog shows I'm not showing them anymore and it's where they like to hang out and when they're underfoot I put them all in here and they're perfectly happy and so it's you know they have curtains which were old curtains that I had because at night I have to cover the window because otherwise it's like watching TV and they for them and they see deer and fox and coyote and start barking all night long so I replaced the floor and I painted it but I'm not one of those fancy kitchen people and I just painted the walls pink because I had extra pink paint you can see the puppies are all just really waking up to life they're trying to bite each other and they haven't figured out to bite each other's Tails yet but they're they figured out ears and necks and I think he's just dying to play with them but you see he's like Baby Huey he's too big and he would really hurt them you can see they're you know they're starting to Rough House I actually had this in my old house too this is a stark carpet and with six dogs it's the only thing that doesn't show every spot because it's spotted so it works so you want to come upstairs um and I'll show you my room so this is the second floor Landing um and this is my grandmother and her two sisters and Isabelle and Mary Mary was this one it was my grandmother um I love this portrait and it's kind of perfect because I had three children but this is these horse paintings are paintings of Roderick William Cameron who is my great great great grandfather who lived in on a farm called Clifton Burley and which was actually underneath of veronzano bridge and he bred racehorses in his horse aristides was actually the first winner of the Kentucky Derby of the first Kentucky Derby but I love these paintings because they've got all of his initials on the on the buckets and the black horse blankets I just think they're kind of wonderful I don't it unfortunately I don't know which horse is which but my towel collection which has got to be at least 30 years old of all my different Porto towels which I love it's my big extravagance and like that and dog food and this is my bedroom which is slightly Askew at the moment because the puppies sleep in here with me for the first three weeks of their life so they've just moved downstairs I still keep them up here at night in their whelping box but um again this room just has funny little things in it you know things that I've collected and I mean Mrs Parish gave me this and Albert Hadley gave me this bookcase which I love looking like curtains and this is uh I played with as a little girl it's um from Queen Elizabeth's coronation in what 1952 and all of the horses and the bee feeders and I've I love anything to do with the royal family so I haven't a collection of cups and that I've had that you know started with her coronation probably from my grandmother that she gave me but I just anything to do with all these cups I love and these are little watercolors done by Albert from that he gave me for my birthday this is a little sketch of of the window at Bergdorf Goodman's which I did with him I don't remember what year um but I've always loved that little sketch and that little drawing of my mother and then these are drawings by Mita Corsini Bland um for a book that I worked on called sister Parish design and a little mouse my mother gave me with and these are lamps from Christopher spitzmiller and it's all just a mishmash my daughter brought me back this quilt from India this is a leftover fabric from when Parish Hadley was thinking about doing something with um quadrill but the little this little sofa Albert gave me this bed belonged to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and I for some reason no one in the family wanted it so I got it um and these are little drawings by Albert a room someone's living room we did in New York and two little drawings of a topiary and a flower arrangement and I saw that lion up in Kent Connecticut at RT facts and loved it um this was sailor's Valentine came from my grandparents house in Maine um and I I must say I'm kind of disappointed to know someone told me recently that these Sailors Valentines we're not always made by the sailors but in fact they bought them in in ports in during the war um I like the idea that they made them for their sweethearts oh my favorite thing in this room actually is this ruler which lists all the kings of England down to Queen Elizabeth there must be a fox outside but isn't it wonderful British history rulers and you can measure on the other side it's not the best what does home mean to me everything I'm a homebody I'm not a social butterfly by any means so for me there's great Solace to be found at home and not with my things but just surrounded by the the comfort of of pretty things I think um I just don't think that I can't imagine living in an ugly space it's just never been what I've been about and what I would want to do I just I need I need to wake up and feel inspired by something pretty in the room be it a you know jar on a table or a painting on the wall or just a color that catches my eye thanks for watching for more homeworthy content be sure to like And subscribe

Channel: Homeworthy

Views: 121,805

Keywords: house, home, house tour, home tour, connecticut, puppies, architectural digest, elle decor, veranda, old home, traditional home, maximalism, parish hadley, albert hadley, country home, country style, chic, beautiful home, homeworthy, quintessence, schumacher

Id: MFVEfGtvf0k

Length: 41min 27sec (2487 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023